Why do I pretend you’ll come in handy? You remind me of past humiliations and desperate straights. You sit there like a bunch of shameful mementos. Your knots contain the constant threat of destitution.

Please Sir, may I have another?

It’s a good thing I’ve kept you around despite this. You’re like shed skin or broken shackles. You are the bonds that have not held me (at least I like to think so). I survey you occasionally so as never to forget.

I imagine an escape from the horrors of a Noir dream. You become a rope-line to pasts that never were — times that should have been. You suspend cocoons of romance and nostalgia.

It’s ridiculous.

You mark servitude in the end. You wrap up those who try to play the game. You choke out other options. You haunt private longings for liberty and happiness. You obscure their possible meanings.

People try appropriating you, to diffuse you, to mock you, to generate agency for themselves, a little autonomy — whatever. It doesn’t seem to do much except make things worse.

If you could coil, spring and kill, you would.

I know you want to break me so I will always keep you close. None of you are going into circulation. You are loyal to brutality. You side with the authorities.